Kismet
by fromcoldtofire
Summary: AU. Betty McRae is a university student writing a paper about a deadly explosion at a local munitions factory during WWII.


On the first day of class, your professor makes everyone draw a slip of paper from a large, yellow envelope.

"If you don't like the topic for your term paper feel free to trade with a classmate, but by the next class everyone's writing them down for me and whatever you're stuck with, you're stuck with." He's holding the envelope and moves to the students in the back of the room when his voice booms again, "You're getting the entire semester to work on these so I expect them to be good. Don't start writing the week before it's due and think you're going to get an 'A'."

The papers are folded in half and are twice the size of the kind a person would find hidden within a fortune cookie.

You wait until class is over and just outside of the doorway, hold your entire semester between two fingers:

**The Victory Munitions Disaster**

..

A couple of weeks pass and you decide to treat yourself to a field trip.

What better way to get inspired to write than to stand in the place where everything actually happened?

After a lot of digging, you find an old directory that has the address for the munitions factory. You check to make sure the street name hasn't changed and then it takes you two tries before you end up on the right bus. (Some days you feel like you'll never get used to living in the city.)

When you step off the bus, you're standing in front of a record store. You reread the address you've written down and realize you're at the right place.

You look around and realize there's no memorial here. They waited for everyone to forget and then they bulldozed it all and built over it.

You don't know if you want to hit someone or cry.

Right where you're standing, there was a day when twenty-eight people walked into a building and never came out again.

..

The first reports had said it had been a passing Luftwaffe strike. There had been a false alarm earlier that day; an unidentified aircraft flying within the vicinity of the building.

When's a better time to bomb a munitions factory than right after they've been given an all-clear?

How the Germans could have known about the false alarm, the newspapers never explained.

(War is the perfect time for sensationalism.)

You have a sick feeling in your gut and the book goes on to confirm that yes, it had all been caused by an explosion from within the building.

It had been an accident.

When you finish reading, your hands are tingling. You slide the book back into its spot on the shelf and you can't help but think that your hands are burning with the ghost of a bombshell slipping from them.

..

You're at the library again (it's become your second home over the past month) and you've got _The Canadian Women of WWII_ splayed open in front of you. The guy sitting at the other end of your table has his iPod turned up so loud that you can hear every word of the song he's listening to and the vibration of his foot tapping against the leg of the table is going all the way through you, but it doesn't matter because, well, there's this picture of a woman.

There's no name beneath, only the words, _A munitions factory worker_.

Her smile is gentle and her eyes are familiar.

You hope that she wasn't at Victory Munitions that day. You hope that she lived to be old enough to tell her grandchildren, with pride in her voice, that she helped defeat Hitler.

The guilt in every joint of your body says that she didn't.

..

You feel her before you see her.

She's on the other side of the bookshelf, a few paces down from where you're standing. In the space above the books you can see the top half of her head and her perfectly parted auburn hair. As her eyes move over the book spines, she's softly humming Billie Holiday.

(Her voice sounds like a memory.)

You step closer to her and through the space in the bookshelf and the two layers of books, her eyes rise to meet yours.

You look at her and you already know how well your palm will fit against hers.

You want to tell her, "This feels like a second chance."

Instead, you smile and say, "Hi."

..

You take her to the record store. It feels like a date, but you're too afraid to ask.

"There used to be a bomb factory here," you say. You tell her you're both standing on a mass grave.

(It only takes a couple of generations to forget twenty-eight names.)

Sometimes she looks at you like she's trying to remember something and this is one of those moments. "The whole world is a mass grave," she says in a small voice, her fingers running over record sleeves to give them something to do.

Falling in love with Kate Andrews is so easy that you know this can't be the first time.

..

Kate has nightmares.

She doesn't need to tell you. You already know.

You're up late working on your paper. Kate's asleep in your bed after nodding off in the middle of a conversation about déjà vu.

It's the whimpering that draws your attention first. Then the twitching of her face and hands. You're reaching for her when she jerks awake, stifling a scream.

(You don't tell her about your own nightmares. The weight of a bombshell slipping from your hands. The blinding, white light.)

She doesn't need to tell you. You already know.

Kate dies in her dreams. Over and over again.

..

She's halfway out the door and she looks like she wants to kiss you.

Your lips are on hers before you can try to talk yourself out of it.

It's soft and then it's hard and hungry and desperate and you don't know why you feel so surprised that she's kissing you back.

You pull away and rest your lips against her temple thinking that if you were to bury your nose in her hair and breathe deep enough, you could smell the trace of cordite.

"This is what was supposed to happen," she whispers. Her words make your breath catch and your fingers clutch her tighter.

When she presses against you, it feels like forgiveness.


End file.
